Dear Architects, Stop working for free

Not too long ago we met with some potential single family home clients at BUILD. Good people, a nice project, and we’d be honored to work with them on their new home. Being a savvy couple, they had done a bit of homework on the design end of their project. A friend of a friend (of theirs), who is an architect, offered to draw up some basic plans pro-bono. Free work from a design professional! Great they thought -and who wouldn’t. They allowed the pro-bono work to proceed and were now talking to some additional professionals as a means of educating themselves and getting a second opinion. Smart.

As we reviewed these pro-bono drawings it began to dawn on us that this architect hadn’t done enough research at the city; they hadn’t gathered information on wetlands, steep slope, critical areas or any other obvious site characteristics. There was little documentation of setbacks, easements or topography on the site plan. The critical data hadn’t been figured out –the critical data that dictates how the plot can be used and where things should be located. The drawings, it would seem, were at best “artistic renderings”, or bluntly, fictitious.

Next, the architect led the clients to a builder who quoted a construction budget. The budget of course is fictitious because the design is fictitious. Magically, the budget defies all types of reason and was quoted at 50% under even the best construction pricing we could foresee. You can just hear the future change orders…
“Oh, we’re going to need pin-piles. Cha-ching.”
“Oh, that’s living space? It looked like crawlspace when I priced it. Cha-ching.”
“Oh, you wanted windows? That wasn’t on the original (fictitious and sketchy) plans.”
“Oh, you wanted hardwood flooring? I quoted somebody else’s (used) carpet.”
and on and on…

Fortunately, the potential clients smelled something even as they were starting to get drawn in by the comprehensive ‘optimism’ of everyone involved.

Everyone typically loses in these situations. The pro-bono architect looks unprofessional for generating a fictitious design, the initial builder option looks dubious, the clients are unpleasantly surprised with a significantly higher construction cost and the architect who provides a factual design gets to be the bearer of bad news.

As much as we hate to pick on one particular incident, this one does a thorough job of illustrating the point. Architects shouldn’t work for free*. We see it again and again; architects who work for free initiate a series of problems that are crippling our profession. So to the architects out there designing houses or similar projects for free, here’s our top 10 list of reasons to stop working for free:

There is a temptation, whether explicit or implicit, that if you’re providing free work you don’t need to provide as thorough a package as if you were being paid. But designing and building a house is a process governed by technicalities, building codes, and gravity. A thorough set of documents and proper coordination with the building department are necessary components, whether there’s a design fee or not.

It misleads the homeowners. All they know is that a profession is working on the job –this would imply that the work is thorough and reliable. They most likely aren’t aware of the fact that steps are being skipped or that the proper research isn’t being conducted. Why would they –there’s a professional working on it.

It trains homeowners to think that architects have more influence over pricing than they do. Creating fictitious plans that fictitious pricing is then based on gives homeowners the false impression that building a home is as cheap as the architect wants it to be. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Framing costs the same amount no matter how much your architect wants it to be. The drywaller has a mortgage to pay on his house just like anybody else and his bills don’t diminish when the architect would like a project to cost less.

It’s just bad business. Ask any MBA about the business model of working for free and they’ll most likely respond with “what business model?”

It devalues the profession of architecture. Working for free suggests that you were that student back in school who sat on the couch in studio all day talking about all-nighters and how kick-ass that project is going to be that you haven’t yet started.

It’s hard to take a professional seriously when they give their time away. If our eye surgeon offered free Lasik eye surgery to us, I’m not sure we’d be too crazy about the idea. We kind of like handing over a nice big fat check to our eye surgeon. That check gives us the confidence that we’re going to get the things we need out of the deal –like depth perception.

It’s degrading. Nobody likes working for nothing.

It undermines accountability. In the event that there are errors or omissions with a set of drawings resulting in legal action, the architect is quite likely to claim that the damages cannot exceed the design fee, which in this case would be zero. Before you know it, that professional architect you knew transformed into a used car salesman complete with plaid suit.

Just because you’ve got “free time” doesn’t mean you have time to give away. A down economy is no excuse for working for free. It’s valuable time to be marketing, networking, blogging, and heck, we don’t know, maybe learning the building code.

It dishonors your other clients who paid good money for the design of their home.

There you go free-working, sitting on the couch in studio, architects. We’d love to hear your top 10 reasons to work for free. Hell, we’ll even pay you for it.

*Disclaimer: of course, the caveat here is that structured and specific pro-bono work is encouraged for things like catastrophes, the less fortunate and orphans. But even these pro-bono services need to be delivered with the same professionalism as typical fee-based services.

Does the AIA not have a set tariff of fees that Architects are required to charge? In BC, pro-bono work is permitted only in a few circumstances. If that happened here, the Architect could have a complaint filed against him and the AIBC could take disciplinary action. Is there not an ethical problem with this within your professional organization?

GREAT post! It is so tempting for unemployed architects to work for free, but of course we only want to do the fun stuff if we aren’t getting paid. I am doing some pro bono work for a local homeless non-profit whose work I admire. I think I am going to be fired for being to pessimistic, they are being badly mislead by an architect and a contractor that work for the building’s seller!

As an independent software developer I do this all the time. Its called sales and its essential. I lay out rough schedules and designs and try to generate order magnitude level estimates. We need to see if we are on the same page or not.

One thing I do do is make it clear that its all speculation based on my first look at the problem. I’m missing all the sorts of details the architect above missed. Hopefully my experience means mys estimates can account for that.

The real question is whether the architect and builder in question would have actually produced substantially better output if they had been paid. There is always someone willing to dramatically underbid me in software and make it up in change orders and sloppy execution.

In the end the real lesson is that the client should expect to get what they pay for (up to a point of course).

Build, good topic to investigate here. “Free” consulting only makes sense in order to qualify the client, ~ 2-3 hours max. A half-brother of this kind of thing is lowballing in order to get “the rest of their work that is coming up”…. when has that ever worked?

I’m not an arquitect, but a civil engineer in portugal. Me and many coleagues, including arquitects work or have worked for free because it is the only oportunity graduates get to show what they are worth, throgh a traineeship. unfortunatly no matter how professional or hardworking you are its much easier for th e company to get another trainee instead of hireing someone. i forgot to metion. trainees are not paid in my country.

Standard of care applies regardless of how much you are being paid. No state licensing board will allow the fee, or lack of fee, to be an excuse for professional misconduct.

While there is no AIA fee schedule – the Justice Department found it to violate free trade laws – many government and institutional owners use fee tables to determine whether a fee proposal is “reasonable.”

The architect could face professional liability claims for his/her shoddy work. There is a fairly new AIA document for pro bono services; one important function of every contract is to allocate risk between the parties, so this document brings those risks to light for discussion.

I will agree to a point with Brian. If the architect is unfamiliar with local zoning/environmental/etc. requirements he should do some investigation before putting pencil to back-of-envelope. You can “sell” this as a free service: “Mr. and Mrs. Homeowner, this sounds like a project that is a great fit for my firm’s talents. But before we can begin to work our magic we need to do some research into [fill in the blank]. Can we schedule a follow-up meeting in a week? I won’t charge for our time in doing the research, but it is really necessary regardless of who you select for this prestigious commission.” Your “report” should have a simple one page disclaimer that “based on limited investigation it appears that development of the property will be restricted by the following issues. If we are fortunate enough to be selected we will immediately contact the appropriate agencies, and retain necessary consultants, to verify these findings.”

I think the saying should be “You MAY get what you pay for, but you WON’T get what you don’t pay for.”

I am currently doing some pro bono design work on an aerated autoclave reinforced concrete block building in Port Au Prince, Haiti that will be a school and orphanage, built with local labor, sourcing local materials. Philanthropy design work is the only pro-bono work that I do…I would never offer to any clients, friends or family, to do design work for free!!..I do initial consultations for no fee, but after that I offer the client a proposal (usually fixed fee) and they can either accept it or go elsewhere…like to that 15 cent architecture d*ck.

Yep, so true! Free work is no good. I find that the main problem is that many architects lack the confidence to charge what they are worth – they feel like their clients and prospects are judging them based on price.